So I went back to the zoo last Sunday, this time with Lam Dai. I went back primarily to take some pictures of the animals for O’s first-grade class. They emailed me a bunch of additional questions – which I have been remiss in not answering yet on the other blog – and specifically asked me to take pictures of the monkey and elephant eating the bananas I take to them. (Having been to the zoo a bunch of times now – twice to visit and numerous times to run – my general feeling is that it’s just kind of sad to see all of those animals locked up in relatively small cages, bored, etc.) Anyway, below are some photos from our trip to the zoo.

Here’s the monkey that I take bananas to. I’ve been calling it a he, but I think it’s actually a she. On Sunday, when we walked up to her cage, she was lying down with her arm over her face and looked very bored. I tried to get her attention by chirping and clicking at her, etc., but she wasn’t interested. Finally, I just threw a banana near her and when she heard it hit the ground she looked up and got very interested very quickly. She ate that first banana and I threw her several more. The pictures aren’t very good quality because she was so far away and my zoom is not very strong, but you get the idea:

I like this one because it looks like she’s smiling at me:

This writhing pile of little crocodiles sent chills up my spine:

Here’s one of their larger cousins:

Here are a couple of general photos of the zoo:

This is the saddest animal at the zoo to me. He is an Indonesian tiger and he is in a very small, concrete cage. He just paces back and forth all day long and back when I was staying at Tim’s house by the zoo, I could hear him roaring at night:

Here is a photo of Lam Dai and me:

Here are some deer that had just been fed and were busy eating when we saw them. I started making a loud blowing noise – like I’ve heard American deer do when they’re alerted to a potential danger, and all of the deer jerked their heads up all at once – so I guess American deer and Vietnamese deer speak the same language:

Finally, here is a video of Lam Dai feeding bananas to an elephant and getting a little freaked out when the elephant’s trunk touches her hand: